luge of
spray that swept her decks from the weather cat-head right aft to the
companion, and plunging next moment into the trough with a strong roll
to windward, and a very bedlam of yells and shrieks aloft as the gale
swept between her straining masts and rigging. She shuddered as if
terrified at every headlong plunge that she took, while the milk-white
spume brimmed to the level of her figure-head, and roared away from her
bows in a whole acre of boiling, glistening foam. The creaking and
groaning of her timbers and bulkheads raised such a din that a novice
would have been quite justified in fearing that the little hooker was
rapidly straining herself to pieces, while more than one crash of
crockery below, faintly heard through the other multitudinous sounds,
told us that the wild antics of the barkie were making a very pretty
general average among our domestic utensils. But, with all her creaking
and groaning, the schooner now proved herself to be a truly superb
sea-boat, scarcely shipping so much as a bucketful of green water,
despite the merciless manner in which we were driving her; and the way
in which she surmounted sea after sea, turning up her streaming
weather-bow to receive its buffet, and gaily "shaking her feathers"
after every plunge, was enough to make a sailor's heart leap with pride
and exultation that was not to be lessened even by the awe-inspiring
spectacle of the mountains of water that in continuous procession soared
up from beneath her keel and went roaring away to leeward with foaming
crests that towered to the height of the cross-trees.

Our first anxiety, of course, was to ascertain whether we were gaining
upon the chase, or whether she was maintaining her distance from us; as
soon, therefore, as we had secured our morning altitude of the sun for
the determination of the longitude, we measured as accurately as we
could the angle subtended by that portion of the barque's main-mast
which showed above the horizon. The task was one of very considerable
difficulty owing to the violent motion of the two craft, and when we had
done our best we were by no means satisfied with the result, but we
thought it might possibly be some help to us; so when we had at length
agreed upon the actual value of the angle, we clamped our instruments,
and, taking them below, stowed them carefully away in our bunks, where
there was not much danger of their coming to harm through the frantic
plunging of the schooner,